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Lisa Zeidner and John Allen Paulos

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from: John Allen Paulos

Of Kurds and Why, Media Mishmash

Posted Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 2:42 PM ET

Hi Lisa,

"Multicult mush" is nice. Looking through a newspaper (not to mention surfing the Net) does sometimes feel like eating mush or maybe canned fruit salad. At first glance everything seems to be of equal importance. Take the front page of today's New York Times. The eerie picture you mentioned of the Kurdish leader Ocalan as he's sentenced to death in Turkey yesterday, the independent counsel law that gave authority to Ken Starr and other special prosecutors finally expiring, another big telecommunication acquisition, one more story demonstrating that the Serbs and the Kosovars (this last part a tendentious reading, granted) were much better off before NATO's well-intentioned, but ill-considered operation, an article on insurance coverage of Viagra making the case for coverage of birth-control pills more compelling, and (food again) a small blurb at the bottom of the page about a story in the dining section that discusses chefs putting things like curry, beer, risotto, sweet potatoes, and roasted beets into ice cream. A part of the fascination of newspapers, this unnatural juxtapositioning of times, locations, and disparate stories fosters a strange illusion of above-it-all lordliness and often a too easy receptivity to the meaningless coincidences, incongruities, and disparities that permeate life.

One such disparity is economic, of course, but the intellectual one is even greater. You go to any good bookstore, real or online, and browse all the wonderfully inviting books, you read the New York Times, say, or the Philadelphia Inquirer and see all the (usually) rich detail, and then, and then, you talk to so many people who, if they have any idea of them at all, think the Kurds disappeared with homogenized milk and Khmer Rouge is the hot new cosmetic this summer. That great chronicler of Americans' educational effectiveness, Jay Leno, has a regular man-on-the-street feature. He accosts young people in Los Angeles and asks them questions such as "Who, according to the Bible, was eaten by a whale?" (Pinocchio), "What's bigger, the moon or the sun?" (the moon, man), and "In what state is Chicago?" (Canada). Replies like the ones in parentheses are the norm too.

I hate to be so earnest and censorious, but that level of ignorance (especially when allied with political or economic power) is frightening.

Equally Solemnly,

John

P.S.: The ad for your book in today's Times was quite enticing--and appropriately so.

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011121314151617
from: John Allen Paulos

Of Kurds and Why, Media Mishmash

Posted Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 2:42 PM ET
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John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of six books, most recently Once Upon a Number (click here to buy the book). Lisa Zeidner, a professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author of four novels, most recently Layover (click here to buy the book), and two books of poems.
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